Posted by zagman73 on 10/5/2012 12:15:00 PM (view original):Great stuff and being new to this game this really helps. Just a couple questions.

1. When your using the Yatzr tool, do you need to save a spreadsheet of 100 recruits for each position or just overall.
2. How much time do you spend on practice plans? Also, how many O's and D's do you practice?
3. I am a little lost on the what the hell "GUESS means" Can someone let me in on that?
4. As far as using Yatzr, do you need to have your search parameters set in GD when you download the list? So search for OL over 1000 miles away, etc...
5. What is the S1, S2, S3..etc on the Yatzr tool?

I think that is it. Been in HD for about 100 seasons and for some reason GD was calling me today (well yesterday). Seems way more in depth than HD, so I may also have questions for setting up gameplans and such, but this should be enough for now. Thanks guys.

1. You shouldn't need to do anything with spreadsheets. Some people like to export the recruits from the tool to a spreadsheet, but that's a single spreadsheet containing all recruits.
4. You don't need to worry about search parameters on the site. The tool will set all of the search parameters when it accesses the site.
5. The S1, S2, S3 columns are for custom equations which are configured under Options->Equations. By default, S1 and S2 use the GUESS equations.

Posted by caesari on 4/16/2012 8:44:00 PM (view original):This thread is for all info on every aspect of the game. Recruiting, gameplanning, setting your depth chart, practice plans, scheduling, job changes, etc. Post all advice you have in this thread and we will try to get it pinned (ahem... Norbert?)

Everyone is allowed to offer advice and their personal take on things. This is meant to be all informational, so if any "griefing" happens here, it will be redlined.

To start, here is damauler12's recruiting manifesto, widely regarded as the best stuff written on the topic to date.

Hey

I was working with a coach on some recruiting stuff and after I typed out a novel to him...I realized that many people could use this stuff. So I will post it here now. A couple of things...

1. This is geared for new or newer coaches and is NOT meant for someone with experience. (Not that they can't use any of the info...just isn't meant for them) It's also meant for coaches who have had trouble recruiting and need some help with it.

2. This is meant almost exclusively for DIII. There are some DII teams that could use this info as well, but I think a person should have a handle on this a few seasons at DIII before they even move to DII.

3. This isn't perfect nor does it cover everything! It's simply meant to make recruiting easier for someone who is new or is struggling.

4. I have tried not to tell you who to recruit. I think each coach should have his own ideas of what he's looking for in recruits.

5. I have added some edits for you to use yatzr's recruiting tool. I had "download a spreadsheet" at #3, but PLEASE download his tool at gdreports.com BEFORE YOU START. From there we will use his tool to help recruit.

With that in mind...here it is...

(Note I started with a few things he was doing wrong and then gave him a step by step guide. I included the "lead up" if you will of our conversation since I thought the concepts were important)

You HAVE to find UNDECIDED recruits before you start. If your list of recruits has almost all "red" dots on it...you NEED to lower your search parameters a bit and find some undecided recruits as well. Say you searched OL and had a 50/50 str/blk set as your search and all your favored recruits come back red. Re-run that search at 48/48 and see if you can find some undecideds. Then again to 45/45 or so. You may have to take a guy or two with a lower score than you like, BUT if they have good WE (45+) AND their potential report comes back as "lotta room to grow" or the ever elusive "Sky's the limit"...this recruit will be PLENTY GOOD by his Jr. or Sr. year. Especially if you throw a redshirt on him.

DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH A RECRUIT AT DIII!!!! Read this again and again and again. At DIII there are soooooo many recruits with similar attributes that battling is almost never really needed. Now...hit my level of vision and success, and you will learn when and where to battle. However...if you are taking on ANY SIM AI RECRUITS at DIII...you need to understand how to recruit a lot better before you should even think of battling.

So...here is a guideline for you next season...

1. After the season rolls over...run your recruiting search. Do NOT run this as soon as your season ends but AFTER job change period ends and new coach sign-ups begin. The easiest way to know when to start your list is to wait until you see ALL of your scholarships available AND all the money in there. Your vision can improve and sometimes u can lose vision. (Usually when you had better vision and have a bad season...not when your vision is just ok to begin with) So no need to run your search until your list is 100% accurate.Edit- 10/12/12 Use yatzr's tool to upload your recruits. See #3 for more info.

2. After you run your list DO NOT TARGET GUYS INTO HIGH, MEDIUM, OR LOW. You may be saying "What"? What I mean is...run your search and save it on a spreadsheet. Say you run your OL at 50/50 (str/blk) and you come up with 41 guys. Keep this list on a sheet but DON'T TARGET any of these guys before recruiting starts...I will explain this a bit later. Also...run your search on AS MUCH OF THE COUNTRY AS YOU CAN. I have found every position EXCEPT LB and DB can be run on the whole country with a search by set parameters. (Not saying you can't with these two slots, but in my experience I use SO MANY different factors it's hard for me to run a simple search on them) So say you are looking for OL...start the search at say 50/50 and run the search by "distance away" instead of "overall rating". If your list comes back with only 18-20 guys run it again at 48/48. Continue this until you have roughly 100 guys. This way you have a nice big list to work off of.

Edit 10/12/12- With yaztr's tool, there is no need to even use search parameters. Simply use his tool and all the recruits in your vision will appear and will be rated in order.

3. If you don't have a spreadsheet already, just make a simple one on excel. Also...gdreports.com in their tools section has the GUESS spreadsheet. If you are struggling I HIGHLY recommend you download that and use it to evaluate recruits. If I remember correctly, he hasn't updated his sheet in awhile. He DOES have his attributes listed, so you can just enter them into the sheet and save it to be accurate with what he has now. Or you can use yatzr's tool as well. I don't use his tool but I have heard GREAT things about it...but since I don't use it, I don't want to "teach it" to someone.

Edit- 10/12/12 USE YATZR'S TOOL!!! Go to gdreports.com and download his tool. Once you have it downloaded, you can simply enter in the GUESS ratings into any of the equations boxes. (Click on OPTIONS and then EQUATIONS) He gives you enough room for 3 different ratings...so if you have your own system simply insert it into any of the SE1, SE2, or SE3 areas and then it will rate your players. Once you have your ratings done...you don't have to do them again!

4. Now you have your sheet set up. Do not target ANY recruits until the day recruiting starts. So until you get the email "it's the most wonderful time of the year" avoid targeting recruits!!! The reason I am telling you this is because I generally want u to avoid almost all sims!!! You won't know which recruits have sims on them until the day recruiting starts. (Or night before basically...like a little after midnight east coast time will the recruits get the sims on them) You will have plenty of time since that 1st cycle takes a day anyway...this gives you almost 36 hours total to "set your board".

5. OK...your sheet is ready and every recruit is either undecided, considering others (red), or the occasionally weird "nothing". These "nothing" recruits are also undecided but some bug that WIS never fixed. Now that your know what each recruit is...you can start targeting them. Now...if recruiting has started...you can't "target" them and not spend money on them. But...to me there is no reason at all to target a recruit and then not at least get a scouting report. So now it's time to shop!!!

6. Re-run your search according to however your sheet has them listed. (Like OL 50/50 etc.) and put them in DISTANCE ORDER. Now...on 1st cycle even though you have the whole country canvassed...let's ONLY look at our own 360. (Which is actually 359...u will notice a recruit who falls on 360 actually costs $500+ to AC scout instead of the $250 or whatever). If you ran a big list, you SHOULD see some recruits who are undecided. Now they may be slightly less attractive than the "red" dot guys, but all you want to do is get some guys green ASAP. You may never even sign these guys, but any of these guys are gonna be a ton better than the sim AI recruits u are gonna take if u bust your recruiting roll!!!

7. I want u to send an AC scout AND AN AC SCOUT ONLY to roughly 3-4x as many as you want to sign at that spot. So if you wanna sign 2 OL...send out 6-8 AC scouts on UNDECIDED recruits in your 360. 1st cycle DON'T venture out of your 360. So look for your "highest" rated undecided recruits and send that AC scout only.

8. DO NOT GO AFTER ANY PLAYER WITH A RED DOT ON HIM!!!

9. Now...Say you have 10 players to get and you started with 30k + bowl money Let's say you send 30 AC scouts and they all cost you the MAX of $271. U will have spent roughly 8k of your budget. Now that's the MOST you will spend. If all of your recruits are inside the 180...you may spend as little as 4kish. This will leave you with PLENTY of money to either battle, knock off sims, or find a good guy outside your 360. Depending on bowl money, you could have as much as 30k left but likely the least you have will be about 24k...this is after 1st cycle runs.

10. OK...1st cycle has run and you have your scouting reports back. Read them position by position looking for only guys with Great or STL potential. Now a bunch of these guys will have gone "red" to other players, "yellow" to you and them, or still be undecided. The "red" guys almost always mean the other coach dropped at least 1 CV as well as an AC scout or he promised a start. We "may" want to battle for a guy like this but let's skip that for now. Our main goal 1st few cycles is to get enough guys green for our needs. Once you know which recruits you like of your "yellow" or especially "undecideds"...fire a single CV at them. CV's are great because if they don't get taken...u get the money back. Also...if you KNOW the player can start right away for you, by all means promise a freshman start. This is a cheap way to get a guy green. Also...you can get an "average" potential guy green as well but try and make sure he has really good WE...like 55+ WE.

11. If you don't have all that many "yellow" or undecideds...look at your list again and run a search again. See if there are still some undecideds within your 360 that fall under your parameters. Don't forget...a high potential/high WE guy will grow bigger than average guys with slightly better cores. So a 47/47 OL now with high WE/potential will generally grow better than the 51/51 OL who's average. That's why it's important not to fall in love with a guy!!! Once you run the search...send an AC scout to those guys in your 360 at positions you may need them.

12. After 2 cycles, you SHOULD have plenty of guys off that undecided start list green to you. As long as he's undecided, and you like his potential...keep firing 1 CV at him until he turns green for you. If the "yellow" dot took the CV from you and is still yellow...that means the other coach also likely fired at least 1 CV at him and that's now gonna be a battle...a battle you may want to fight or avoid. Now you should have green guys AND a ton of money left. If you had 10 CV's take and they all turned green...you spent an additional 8-10k of your 24kish. You should have almost 1/2 your starting budget AND 10+ guys you want to recruit as at least back-up options.

13. Now...once you have that accomplished you can do a few things.

A) Battle for guys who are yellow or turned red the 1st cycle and that team is still the same. (Meaning they spent likely only 1 CV and 1 AC...normally). I would generally avoid battling if I were you but at least now you have some money for it AND you have backup options if u lose.

B) You can knock off sims of some recruits you liked that started red. These recruits are easy to spot because they will still have 3 teams on them. (Always check to be sure because it could be a 3 team human battle...but that's usually not the case)

C) Go across country to find some good undecideds.

If you look at my Capital (Camp) roster you will notice that I have guys from everywhere. Not just Ohio and Pa., but places like Arizona, California, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Oregon to name a few. Safe to say...these are not spots in my 360! Look at your big list again and see if any of these guys are undecided. If they are and are an upgrade over a guy you have green...send an AC scout to them. Now...these will cost between $500-$700...so be careful. That's why I want u to wait at least 2-3 cycles before going long distance. No reason to fire that much money 1st cycle just to see a school within their 360 or a coach with better prestige land on them and you just wasted the money. After u get the ac scouting report back and it comes up great or STL...then your best bet to get them cheap is to promise a start. CV's get expensive long distance (a minumum of $1200 and can be over 2k) so be careful using them.

14. Knocking off sims. If you have a recruit in your 359 and he has sims on him and you want the recruit...1st ONLY send an AC scout. No reason to knock off a sim with average potential. If that report comes back as great or STL...and YOU HAVE TO HAVE HIM...then make sure you get rid of all the sims. To do this, send 3 CV's right away. Usually this will do the trick. If all 3 take and you still have 1 sim left...send another CV. This will knock off the sim 99% of the time in my experience. If for some reason this doesn't work...send another CV. I have NEVER EVER seen it take more than 5 CV's to knock off a DIII sim. Getting a sim recruit will ALWAYS cost you a minimum of around 2.6k under perfect conditions. (1 AC ($125) + 3 CV's ($800) + Scholly ($100) = $2625 at a minimum distance) If he is at the 359 end of the spectrum you are looking at 1 AC ($271) + 3 CV's ($1044) + Scholly ($100) = $3503. You can see how knocking off sims is a very expensive process...and one you should avoid generally.

15. Battling- This will always be different for every team and coach you are against. At DIII I generally would avoid battling. However...if you do battle keep a few things in mind.

A) Does he have the distance edge or do you? Or is it equal?B) How many scholarships does he have? C) Know your opponent if possible.D) Is he in other battles?

You want to have as many factors in your favor as possible when you battle. The more edges you have the better. If you started with 17 to fill and he has 10...you started with at least 21k more than him. If you had a lot of bowl money and he is in a mostly sim conference...you have extra there too. If the recruit is in your 180 but not his...you have about a $200 edge per CV than he does.

Also...once it's a battle I generally think using CV's only is your best bet in the battle.

16. Say you don't get your 10 guys green who all have great WE/Potential upside. It's OK try and turn some of you average recruits green. Again...it's better to get an average recruit than it is to have the Sim AI sign guys for you.

17. Save enough money for your scholarships!! This may seem like a no brainer, but it's amazing how often I hear of coaches spending all their cash on recruits...and not saving the money to sign them!!! If you have 10 slots to fill...you need 1k for their scholarship offers!!! So make sure you save at least that much for them!!!

I think that covers a bunch of it but I am SURE I left some stuff out. Again...I didn't plan on writing this manifesto if you will...it just sorta happened in a sitemail!!! So if I did forget anything or if you have questions...ask!!!

How do you get recruits interested at the beginning of recruiting. Every season, most players are already interested in other teams, even up to twelve hours before recruiting begins. In eight years of coaching I think I've had one player with a yellow dot when the opening bell rings. I thought that targeting them during the season would be the answer but it doesn't matter.